The Other Slavery: Gold Mining and the ‘Peculiar Institution’

Abstract

Blacks in this captaincy enjoy an unusual degree of liberty in comparison to the rest of America. There can be no doubt but that the manner of life of the slave today does not constitute true slavery and may more appropriately be termed licentious liberty.

Such was the view expressed by the count of Assumar in 1719 referring to Minas Gerais. This assessment that the institution of slavery in the mining regions differed in form and substance from that present in the plantation or urban areas was to be echoed by crown appointees and by the colonists themselves.1 Even today Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, and Goiás are lands of stark contrasts in their human and physical geography. Perhaps it is not surprising that descriptions of their societies in the past should include oxymoron. Probably nowhere in Portuguese America as much as in Minas Gerais and the other mining regions was there so heightened a consciousness on the part of whites of the presence of slaves and freedmen of African descent; and yet nowhere were relations between masters and slaves, conditions governing labour, and the degree of autonomy granted to some slaves, to be characterised by such fluidity. Our purpose here is twofold: first, to examine the impact of gold mining on the institution of slavery in an economic context far removed from the plantation societies so beloved of historians, anthropologists, novelists, and poets; and secondly, by emphasising the functions, activities, and opportunities for initiative and self-determination open to some slaves in the mining economies, to illustrate the greater potential for making the physical, psychological, and financial transition from slavery to freedom.

Leslie B. Rout, Jr, ‘The African in Colonial Brazil’, pp. 135–6 in Martin L. Kilson and Robert I. Rotberg (eds), The African Diaspora. For fluctuations of slave prices reflecting laws of supply and demand, see the recent study of the Chocó gold fields by William Frederick Sharp, Slavery on the Spanish Frontier. The Colombian Chocó, 1680–1810 (Norman, 1976) pp. 113–14, 118–22, 145, and tables 10 and 11 on p. 202. See also Bakewell, Silver Mining, pp. 122–3. The 1789 estimate by the councillors of Vila Rica is in their letter of 5 August 1789 published in Revista do Archivo Público Mineiro IV (1899) 790–1.Google Scholar

This account is based on Jean Barbot, Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea … (London, 1746), bk 3, chs 4, 11, 17, 18, 20, part of whose account relied on a Dutch narrative of 1600 contained in Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes, vi (New York, 1905) 347–9; John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, &f the West Indies … (London, 1735) pp. 183–6;Google Scholar

R. S. Rattray, Ashanti(London, 1923) pp. 300–15; Philip J. C. Dark, An Introduction to Benin Art and Technology (Oxford, 1973). In 1816 the Dutch governor-general in El Mina observed that the slave trade had contributed to the drastic reduction in the numbers of gold diggers;Google Scholar

see Ivor Wilks,Asante in the Nineteenth Century. The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge, 1975) p. 679. Cf. pp. 244–5, 434–6.Google Scholar

56.

This was a constant theme of the governor’s correspondence; 26 March 1718, 13 July 1718, 20 April 1719, 28 November 1719 (APMSG, vol. 4, fols 209v-10v, 214v-15, 218–19v, 238–9. One outcome of this fear was negrophobia embracing blacks and mulattos, slaves and freedmen. Typologies of slave resistance are discussed in George M. Frederickson and Christopher Lasch, ‘Resistance to Slavery’, Civil War History, xiii: 4 (December 1967) 315–29. Comparison of ‘plots’ and regions with majorities of persons of African descent might be fruitful;CrossRefGoogle Scholar